Bookworms a declining species?

S. brought this paper to my attention last week, and it's been mentioned in several other news sources since. Apparently the National Endowment for the Arts has published a study which reports that "[l]iterary reading is in dramatic decline with fewer than half of American adults now reading literature.... Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America reports drops in all groups studied, with the steepest rate of decline - 28 percent - occurring in the youngest age groups." (NEA press release here; .pdf of report here.)

This is a depressing report, or at any rate, a provocative one that invites closer analysis. As S. commented via e'mail, a lot depends on the study's definition of "literary reading". Here it is, from page 1-2: "The 2002 SPPA asked respondents if, during the past 12 months, they had read any novels, short stories, plays, or poetry. A positive response to any of those three categories is counted as reading literature, including popular genres such as mysteries, as well as contemporary and classic literary fiction. No distinctions were drawn on the quality of literary works."

I have a quibble or two with this definition. Most notably, what about nonfiction? Is the person who reads, say, popular history books, or biographies, or religious commentaries, less "literate" than one who plows through a dozen romance novels or "bestsellers" a year? Is all nonfiction automatically "nonliterary"? (Goodbye, Mr. Thoreau; so long, Izaak Walton; seeyalater, Stephen Ambrose....)

The table on page ix indicates that the percentage of people who read "any book" during the previous 12 months, as opposed to reading "literature", did drop, but not as quickly as the percentage reading "literature". The fact that it dropped at all is disturbing, but I wonder whether the report is masking a trend toward reading of nonfiction rather than "literature".

I also wonder whether some of the decline in reading of printed narrative fiction is due to the increasing popularity of audiobooks. At Suburban Public Library, about half the querents at the reference desk specifically ask for audiobooks rather than the printed variety. Many of them state that this is because they need to listen to it in the car. Can listening to a story while driving carry the same cultural weight as reading it on a printed page?